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This chapter surveys the factors that have given rise to foreign sourcing and analyses the divergent manner in which national institutional environments, as well as international regulatory bodies, have shaped the coordination and governance of global production networks (GPNs). It shows how, in building GPNs, firms' various strategic concerns, particularly cost reduction, flexibility (in terms of capacity variation), and management of the extremely volatile competitive environment, have interacted with both domestic and global institutional opportunities and constraints to result in a complex web of influences. Additionally, the nationally diverse capabilities, resources and strategies of retail customers are shown to exert a strong influence on power relations in the GPN. In outlining different national sourcing strategies, the chapter explores both the mode of sourcing and the locational choices of firms. Finally, it analyses the nature of relationships in the network between western buyer firms and their contractors in low-wage countries.

This chapter shows that wine was traditionally a luxury because of the high and discriminatory import duties, which benefited Portuguese and Spanish producers at the expense of the French. With the reforms of the early 1860s there was a temporary increase in consumption and a switch in preference away from Iberian fortified wines toward French table wines. Merchants blended cheap commodity wines from different locations to minimize quality fluctuations, but although retail prices remained remarkably stable during the phylloxera-induced period of shortages, this was achieved only by significantly reducing product quality. Poor wines and numerous press reports concerning their adulteration led to falling consumption. The failure of buyer-driven commodity chains such as the Victoria Wine Company or Gilbeys to significantly cut marketing costs implied that the small family retailer remained competitive, but neither could simultaneously cut prices and guarantee product quality for consumers.

This chapter examines Athenian literature, especially fourth‐century oratory, but also comedy, to show both how public speakers presented and audiences perceived their economy and grain supply. The different personnel connected with the grain supply, from grain‐dealers (sitopolai) and “retailers” (kapeloi) to politicians and kings, each had their own pattern of rhetorical presentation. By observing how these patterns intersect, it is argued that the direct involvement of Athenian politicians in trade, and particularly in the grain supply on which Athens delicately depended for its survival, always risked a direct clash with democratic ideology, and therefore required subtle forms of rhetorical manipulation and concealment. Once the purpose and forms of this concealment are detected, Athenian rhetoric serves to reinforce both the picture of elite land‐holding in the cleruchies presented in Chapter 3, as well as that of elite networking in the Pontic trade of the fourth century presented in Chapter 5.

This chapter utilizes Provident Financial's archives to chart the history, scale, and scope of check trading. By the 1930s, Provident alone had one million customers. Checks (which were used in shops that accepted them) were sold to customers by agents, who then collected weekly payments. The system was criticized as costly, and for the allegedly poor quality goods that retailers sold to customers. However, it proved popular, not least because a Provident check could be used in numerous shops. The government were less happy with check trading and subjected it to controls during World War Two. Check traders marketed higher value vouchers during the 1960s, which were used to evade government restrictions on hire purchase. This boosted check traders and they planned more upmarket financial products. However, retailers abandoned the system from the 1970s, preferring store and credit cards, leaving check traders to turn to moneylending and the financially excluded.

This chapter first examines co-operative retailers. Co-operative ideologues viewed credit as unthrifty, putting a brake on its provision. However, mutuality clubs (which resembled check trading) operated between 1923 and 1968 and equalled the Provident's turnover in the 1950s. But many consumers preferred the Provident check's portability. Less successful were the co-operative movement's post-war experiments with mail order. Though championed by critics of Provident, the co-operative movement's credit policies were socially exclusive. Members had to have funds in their co-operative society before accessing instalment facilities. A cocktail of altruistic and instrumental motives led to unauthorized lending of co-operative books between neighbours. Working-class agency was also evident in credit rotation societies (ROSCAs). Their gendered use in ‘traditional’ working-class communities is narrated, as it that in Afro-Caribbean and Asian immigrants (where they were frequently a response to financial exclusion). Social connectedness within ROSCAs proved powerful, but they too were socially exclusive.

In this chapter, Michael Wortmann examines European retailing and its global expansion. Within the European Union, retail markets are still highly fragmented in many respects. The national retail systems in Europe are significantly different from one another, not only because of differences in consumer preferences, but also because of variations in regulations affecting retailing. Although now slowed by recession, the most rapid transformation in retailing has occurred in Eastern Europe, with West European retailers in many cases playing a leading role. Many of the changes in Europe mirror those in the USA, with the development of self-service, larger store size formats, horizontal expansion, and retailer-led efficiency gains in the supply chain. However, in no European country are these changes as advanced as in the USA. The higher level of regulation not only hampers these changes, but modifies them, leading to new and successful innovations in some cases. Wortmann focuses on retailing in four major countries. In France and the UK, retailing regulation has been relatively weak, so many of the trends have materialized to a much greater extent than in Italy, which has very rigid regulations. Germany is somewhere in between, attempting to limit store size, but not merchandising practices, which has led to the growth of small-store hard discounters, such as Aldi, the owner of Trader Joes in the USA. In part because of the limited opportunities to expand domestically, some of the major European retailers have been leaders in the global expansion of retailing. The chapter includes short case studies of some of the major European retail innovators, such as Carrefour, Aldi, Metro, and Tesco.

Ito-Yokado (IY) and Seven-Eleven Japan (SEJ) has contributed in many ways to the contribution of retailing as utilizing IT made it possible for the two companies's stores to react more effectively to demand fluctuations that are brought about by local events, weather changes, shift in tastes, customer demographics, and other such spot causes. This improvement in their processes has not only reduced inventory costs but also facilitated the increases in the sales revenue per square meter. These companies have established allies with suppliers over different goods and services, thus encouraging others to form strategic alliances to gain more profit with the help of IT systems. This chapter looks into the retailing areas wherein IY operates, how IT is used in retailer-supplier relations, the measures taken which made SEJ Japan's leading fast food provider, and IY's e-commerce projects.

In this chapter, Gary Hamilton and Misha Petrovic introduce the main topic of the book: how retailers are changing the global economy. The main themes are also introduced, including the retail revolution and the five trends coming out of this revolution that shape global retailing today. These five trends are (1) the sudden rise of huge retail chains that have grown up at the same time as shopping malls have been built throughout the USA, Europe, and, gradually, the rest of the world; (2) the blurred boundaries between manufacturing, merchandising, and retailing; (3) the development of lean retailing; (4) the development of global suppliers for consumer goods sold by merchandisers and retailers, and (5) the transformation of consumption and consumers. The core concepts of market making, consumer and supplier markets, and the impact of retailers on the global economy are outlined. This chapter also presents an overview of the book.

In this chapter, Misha Petrovic and Gary Hamilton outline the market-making perspective and contrasts this perspective with two alternatives perspectives (namely, theories of comparative and competitive advantage) that are frequently used to conceptualize international trade and the global economy. The alternatives are generally ahistorical and non-organizational, and both rely on unrealistic assumptions about how actual markets work. The two authors then describe the historical background for the retail revolution, and show that market making by retailers involves multiple institutional innovations that have contributed to the evolution of both horizontal and vertical competition between retailers and their suppliers in the course of making national and global markets. The market-making perspective is shown to be historical, developmental, and organizational.

In this chapter, Benjamin Senauer and Thomas Reardon examine the transformation of food industries and supermarket retailing. This industry is leading edge in the diffusion of global retailing throughout the developing world today. Nine of the top ten retailers of 2007 sell food products, and all these chains use food retailing as a wedge to introduce a range of other consumer goods to the people in the developing world. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, food retailers, including food service operators, began to play a major role in creating global consumer and supplier markets. Thanks to global sourcing, consumers have now become accustomed to having fresh fruits and vegetables year around and exotic food products from abroad. A small number of European companies, including Carrefour, Aldi, Tesco, and Metro, along with Wal-Mart are dominating the international expansion of food retailers. These global retailers have spurred the development of regional supermarket chains in many developing countries, and together they are having a profound impact on agricultural production throughout the world. These supermarkets are reshaping the supply chain for locally sourced products, all the way back to the farm level. Supermarket chains want to deal with a small number of reliable suppliers, not hundreds of small peasant farmers. A contractual arrangement is frequently established with a few “preferred suppliers” who can meet their standards.

While the public health lobby became more influential in the 1970s and 1980s, it struggled to have an impact on policy. The political mood, which had swung towards the liberalisation of the drinks trade in the early 1960s, did not change under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative administration. If anything, it became more firmly established. This is not to say that there were no concerns over drink and drunkenness. In 1989, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission published a report on the supply of beer which looked specifically at the question of tied houses. The report formed the basis of the Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order — otherwise known as the ‘Beer Orders’. The historic tie between brewers and retailers collapsed following the Beer Orders; the principle of ‘need’ collapsed under pressure from both central government and the magistrates' own advisory bodies. For the first time, the alcohol industry began to market drunkenness as a primary aim of drinking as they sought to compete with other psychoactive youth markets.

This chapter examines Counterpoint Press's marketing for Jarrettsville, focusing on how it increased awareness for Cornelia Nixon's novel at BookExpo America (BEA). It first provides an overview of BEA, a trade conference held in May or early June each year for publishers to coordinate with booksellers, before discussing how novels are transitioned from production to reception, and how the first sale of a novel must be successful in order to create the opportunity for success in the second sale. It then shows how Counterpoint navigated Jarrettsville from the field of production to the field of reception through relationships between publicity directors and reviewers/review outlets, positive online chatter from BEA, the enthusiasm of the field representatives, and the strong buy-in from retailers. The chapter also considers how Jarrettsville generated strong interest from readers in the South and Mid-Atlantic.

This chapter examines the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) during the 1980s. While Ronald Reagan's attacks on unions were ideologically satisfying, by this time NAM's principal battle was no longer against labor, which had lost its bargaining power. Indeed, the NAM of the 1980s had much in common with its historical enemy as both sought to shore up “old” industries against new import-dependent retailers (like Wal-Mart) and non-unionized high-tech industries. NAM and labor still skirmished, of course. But it is worth considering their common plight in the Reagan Era. Both had been losing both members and politicel clout. Both were part of the old “smokestack” industrial economy. And both were slowly being abandoned by the parties that had once fought their battles in Washington. Just as a new breed of Democrats were ignoring the demands of a shrinking union constituency, so too were Reagan Republicans less than thrilled about saving manufacturing. Once at the forefront of shaping industrial capitalism, NAM and its union foes were now struggling to survive in a post-industrial economy.

The home improvement industry involves many different players, from lenders to manufacturers and retailers. Then there are the media such as consumer magazines, television shows, and web sites and blogs that instruct, entertain, and address our needs for an improved home. Do-it-yourself emerged in 1952 as a distinctive market and became a recognized fad by 1954. The rise of the home improvement market took decades, and involved a wide range of cultural and economic forces. This book argues that the home improvement industry emerged at a time of rising affluence and growing consumer debt, together with the emergence of home ownership as the dream of the “American” (not to mention the Canadian and the Australian) middle class. It offers a closely woven historical narrative of the industry and discusses how lumber dealers severed some of their established ties with the lumber trade, the general crisis in the building industry that emerged in the late 1920s, the postwar owner-building boom, and the emergence of the home improvement market in the 1950s.

Home owners relied on improvement manuals for tips about how to maintain and repair their homes, but there was no home improvement store during the 1920s to offer more specific advice about colors, designs, and materials. Consumer demand would eventually give rise to consumer-friendly retailers, a process that was both painful and protracted. There were two types of building suppliers in the 1920s: large manufacturers and small retailers. The sale of building supplies was dominated by local lumber dealers, who were not accustomed to consumer sales, appeared to have no interest in the consumer trade, and were also slow in trying to shape the consumer market. Another problem was the way building materials, including lumber, was distributed. Seeing an opportunity, new building suppliers sought out consumers by introducing new products to the market ranging from concrete blocks and asphalt shingles to hardboard, gypsum board, and linoleum. They gave consumers what their old counterparts could not through aggressive marketing in the form of advertising and trade promotion.

As suppliers of the single most important building material, local retail lumber dealers were in the best position to address the growing interest in home improvements, and were able to offer short-term credit, which could boost sales. However, they were slow to rise to the challenge. The failure of local retail lumber dealers to go after a business that promised to be profitable was baffling. The primary reason was that lumber dealers, like most retailers, were specialized and were neither equipped nor inclined to deal with consumers. Chain stores engaged in the lumber business were most prominent in small towns, where they were known as line yards. Regardless of location, however, most retailers did not stock the range of building materials or tools necessary for home improvement. The majority of lumber dealers were ambivalent about consumers, particularly women—the consumer group that presented the greatest challenge to them. That lumberyards were not consumer-friendly posed a serious barrier to the home improvement industry.